Chapter 13

The following new historic character appears in the next few chapters:

Nathanael Greene

American Army Commander, 5'-10" tall, at 58 years old he still had broad shoulders and a deep chest even thought his hair had turned gray.

That evening (Wednesday) we tried an actual restaurant. The food wasn't much better than that at the tavern, but they didn't serve hard liquor, and the General stayed reasonably sober.

"Burke was one of my dispatch riders during the war. He was a wild young fellow then, and always up for a challenge or some other devilment," the General told us during dinner. The gates were still open when we returned to the fort this time.

It was well after dark that night when the next storm started. This was no light shower like last night's storm had been. This was a gully washer, and the storm threatened the entire post.

"This is going to take something more serious than just wards. We'll never get any sleep with the sound of that rain hitting the roof, if we still have a roof with all of that wind, and some of that lightning has been awful close," Wolf remarked to me after the storm had been raging for a short time.

"Yes, it will require a defensive shell, especially with that lightning," I told him. "Set your strongest wards, and we'll go out and cast a defensive shell."

"Right, Mark," Wolf agreed. Gerald just smiled at us. Outside in the storm, we picked what looked like the center of the fort, sat down in the water and mud, and quickly cast a spherical defensive shell. We expanded it until the entire fort was covered, and there was no more rain falling inside of it. Our wards had kept the rain off of us, but had also caused us to float on top of the water and mud that covered the ground. The cessation of the rain startled everyone, especially the sentries, and soon there were a number of people with candles and lanterns outside to see what was happening.

"It stopped raining!" the Sergeant said in a surprised voice.

"It stopped raining in here you mean," I corrected him. "It's still raining cats and dogs outside of our shell," I continued. "If you listen closely, you can still hear the rain hitting the shell." My words were reinforced right after that by several lightning strikes not far outside of our defensive shell. The Thunder rolled loud and clear immediately after that, and the downpour and the wind increased in intensity right after that also. General Clark was standing outside of his cabin with a candle lantern and stared at Wolf and me for a short time.

"Sullivan said that you kept his entire camp dry during a bad storm shortly after the battle, but I thought that he was making it up so you would look good. He was telling the truth apparently," General Clark said before shaking his head and returning to his cabin. We and the others returned to our cabins also for the remainder of the night.

Everyone was up early the next morning. The storm had moved east over night, and there was only a gentle rain falling now. It too soon stopped, and we were ready for breakfast, such as it was here. General Clark had a different idea.

"We need to check on boat departures first," he insisted. We saddled the horses, and dutifully followed him down to the shore of the river after canceling the defensive shell. The Cumberland was now considerably higher and wider than it had been yesterday. The river had risen more than a foot overnight, and it appeared that it would continue rising for some time, as all of the water from the storm up-river reached Nashborough over the next couple of days. There was still great activity along the shore because of all of this. We were hailed by the same man who we had spoken to previously soon after reaching the shore.

"Are you still interested in going down river?" he shouted over the noise along the shore from all of the work in progress.

"We are!" General Clark acknowledged in just as loud a voice.

"There will be two keelboats leaving shortly. One is fully loaded, but the other one has room yet for all of you and your horses," he told us in a quieter voice, as much of the noise had stopped when people realized that he was talking to us.

"When is it leaving?" the General asked.

"In a couple of hours," was the reply.

"We'll be ready in less than that," General Clark assured the riverman. "Which boat is it?"

"The boat on the end," the riverman told us, pointing to a long keelboat with a lot of activity going on around it.

"We'll be back after eating and collecting our things," General Clark assured him. Breakfast wasn't any better than it had been previously, but we didn't know when we would get anything else to eat.

Back at the fort, we gathered the few things that we had brought with us. Wolf and I went to the stable and stacked the remaining hay and grain bags along with the buckets and brushes in a neat pile and wrapped a ward around them so that no one could misappropriate any of it before we called it to us on the shore of the Cumberland or on the keelboat. Gerald was taking care of our gear and the food chest.

Activity around the boat had lessened considerably by the time we returned, and we were introduced to the boat's Captain and owner. He was a large bearded man, dressed in canvas trousers and a cotton shirt. General Clark and Captain LeGras talked with him and agreed on the price of our passage. Wolf, Gerald, and I were much more interested in the boat.

The boat appeared to be some seventy feet in length and fifteen feet in width. There were presently something over three feet of the sides above the water while partially loaded, and we later learned that she drew two and a-half feet of water when fully loaded. There were still nearly three feet of the sides above water when we departed.

She was sharp at both ends and had a large rudder on the stern. There were cleated walkways some thirty inches wide with storage under them along both sides of the boat. They started ten feet from the bow where the bow decking ended, and ran all of the way to the cabin in the rear of the boat, a distance of thirty-five feet. Between the walkways was a large open area, or hold. It was ten feet wide and thirty-five feet long. The cabin in the rear part of the boat was twenty-five feet long and the entire width of the boat. It was high enough for a man, even the General, to stand in upright. The area over-top of the cabin had seats and a removable canvas cover supported on frames. The Captain steered the boat from the rear of this area. There was also a mast for sails near the front of the boat. It had two yardarms with canvas sails reefed tightly to them at present.

Presently, the hold area was mostly empty and this would be where the horses and their food would go. After the General had negotiated for our fare, he and the boat's Captain came over to the three of us.

"How do you intend to get the horses on board?" the General asked.

"We'll need some long planks," the Captain replied.

"We'll take care of getting the horses on board and off, Captain," I told him, as a smile spread across the General's face.

"Let's get them unsaddled first. Then we'll move them on board," I told Wolf and Gerald. We unsaddled all five horses and stacked the saddles out of the way before calming the horses, especially the General's which was high spirited. Then we arranged them in pairs with the General's horse in the rear alone. The three of us then joined hands and I cast the transfer spell for a line-of-sight transfer onto the boat.

The crew and the Captain had been watching us all of this time, and all of them were shocked and amazed when we vanished from the shore and just as suddenly reappeared in the hold area of the boat. The saddles appearing there a few seconds later were hardly noticed as they were all still staring at the five horses and us.

"Ho ... how did you do that?" the boat's Captain asked in a much quieter voice than he normally used, when he had recovered enough to speak. The crew hadn't said anything yet.

"Magic! It's what we do," I told him before Wolf and Gerald disappeared and then reappeared with the grain, hay and other things that we had left in the stable. Gerald also had our food chest. We saw a number of the crewmen make signs against evil or cross themselves at all of these goings on, but the horses, especially the General's and Captain LeGras's, needed calming again, and we were busy for a bit with that.

"Are we loaded?" General Clark asked when we were finished with the horses.

"Yes sir. The grain and hay were the last things that needed to be loaded," I assured him.

"We are loaded," General Clark informed the boat's Captain.

"All right, lads. Time to shove off. Man the poles," the Captain directed in a strong voice, as he took the ladder to the top of the cabin and proceeded to the rudder at the far end of it. The crew of a dozen men took up the long poles secured to the cleated walkways. These poles were thirty-two feet in length, and they used them to push the boat out into the current after setting them in the mud along the shore. Several men were on the other side of the boat with poles in the water ready to keep us from turning across the current and being swamped.

The boat moved easily out into the current of the river, having cleared the other boats along the shore. That current was flowing very fast at present. The Captain moved us out to the center of the river as quickly as possible. The three of us stayed with the horses during all of this to keep them calmed down. After a time Gerald volunteered to take the first watch on the horses, and Wolf and I joined the General and Captain LeGras on top of the cabin.

"It should be a quick trip," we heard the boat's Captain telling General Clark as we joined them. "With all of that rain last night, the river has risen at least two feet and is flowing more quickly than usual. Maybe as much as five miles an hour. Once we get past the bends in the river near Nashborough, we'll rig the sails and pick up a little extra speed."

It had been about 9:00 that morning when we departed Nashborough. It was near noon when we cleared the last of the big bends near the city. The crew had been very busy with their poles in the turns to insure that we didn't approach the banks too closely, as the boat responded rather slowly to the rudder. We had kept our Power Rings ready to lend a hand if necessary, but the Captain had navigated the river with little trouble even with the strong current.

The crew broke out the large main sail as we cleared the last of the bends and could see a reasonably straight river ahead of us. We needed to calm the horses again as the large canvas sail flapping above them made them nervous at first. After a time, they grew accustomed to it and were calmer. In the late afternoon, the crew rigged a long tarp on supports over the horses to keep some of the sun off of them.

We continued to sail up the Cumberland until around 7:00 that evening when the Captain had the sail taken in and steered the boat into the shore in what appeared to be a small cove.

"We have made about fifty miles today," he informed us. "Tomorrow we will do even better if the current and the breeze hold," he assured us. The crew had secured a line from the boat to a large tree some distance from the shore line. Now they began pulling things out of storage lockers in the bow of the boat and the majority of them moved ashore to set up camp for the night.

We had fed the horses some of the grain and hay during the day and had gotten buckets of water from the river for them to drink. We had also transferred their waste to the river to keep the deck of the boat reasonably clean.

I went ashore to check for a place for them to graze during the night. The cove wasn't all that large and there wasn't that much grass available, but I thought that it would be sufficient for them over night, and we would also leave some of the hay there for them to eat if necessary. On returning to the boat, we transferred the horses to the area that I had scouted. We also transferred our box of provisions to the shore where the crew had started a fire to cook their dinner.

They had also erected a shelter using some of the long poles used to propel the boat upstream, and some shorter ones that had been in storage. The canvas cover, that had been used to shade the horses in the hold that afternoon, was used to cover the pole structure. The whole thing sloped to the back similar to a lean-to. The opening faced mainly to the east where their campfire was located, as storms seemed to come in from the west.

We joined them, and they provided a spit to roast our beef on and a kettle to cook the remainder of our meal with. We had made a lunch of some sandwiches from a part of the baked ham and some of the bread that afternoon when we had cleared the last of the hairpin bends in the river west of Nashborough. Now we had our evening meal. The crew of the boat seemed like a very jolly group, and after eating their meal, they sang a number of songs, mainly in French but one in English, before they bedded down in their lean-to like structure. There was always at least one of them on watch on the boat all that night.